The military-industrial complex has been itching to poke its big stick into the anthill of the Syrian war and the sarin gas attack- which may or may not have been Assad's responsibility- gave it the excuse it had been looking for. Cue the launch of 59 tomahawk cruise missiles at the cost of $832,000 a bang. Any given president is only ever a front for the arms manufacturers and Clinton would have done the same or similar, but might have voiced her moral outrage with less glutinous hypocrisy than Trump did in his "beautiful dead babies" speech.

I toured a factory that makes the aluminum hulls for the Tomahawk missiles. They start with a solid block of aluminum the size of a Volkswagen, and cut away anything that does not look like a Tomahawk, leaving behind a huge pile of metal chips. One day's usage will keep the factory busy for months.